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Monday-ish Coffee : Cast a Wide Net

I’ve been thinking about the results of That Poll on how our creativity and our loved ones interact. If you’re a numbers fiend, here are the poll results in order of how many votes each choice received:

Being part of a supportive writing community: 25% of the choices that people made included this choice

Being a writer is a lonely life; at the end of the day, your support system doesn’t do the writing – you do: 18%

My dear ones are supportive of my writing, so it’s never been an issue: 14%

Other: 13% (which included everything from meeting your friendly neighborhood librarian – a great idea! – to waiting to show your work in real life print )

Hermitting: 11%

Creating a supportive community: 10%

Putting a firewall between my writing life and my other life : 7%

Therapy : 2%

I found a lot to be heartened about here : for example, that many of us have supportive people to hang out with when our daily support system isn’t quite working for us.

I’m also impressed at the complexities we encompass: we can simultaneously love people and understand that they can’t be everything to us all the time; we can be solitary in creation but we nurture that process through interactions.

In short, we’re good at casting a wide net to help ourselves create, whether that net grabs us a “room of one’s own” or a support system to be part of.

One thing I didn’t poll on is the professional support that creative people sometimes need/choose to have: editors, agents, publishers, typists, translators, transcribers, teachers, writing groups. I’m going to let Andrea introduce her wonderful editor, but I wanted to mention the editing company because Write Helper is running the Burning The Midnight Oil Poetry Contest, a rare contest that provides cash prizes for the winners, plus a free critique for all entrants. So if you’re a poet casting your net for new places to place your work, the contest is open now through next week (Oct 31st) – throw your net out onto the waters, see what comes back to you !

[ina’s note: This was supposed to be Monday’s post, but we had a time dependent notification to put up yesterday. So, we’re having coffee a day late. Y’all don’t mind late coffee, I hope? We can even make it decaf if you like 🙂 ]